Does a "format c" erases everything of a SSD ?

I have read that a "format c" on a normal HD , doesn't erase everything , with special equipement , files can be recovered.

Is this also the case with a SSD ?

 

Not sure, but from what I know, formatting just clears the address tables, so formatting an SSD would still leave the data in the drive. However, since there is no magnetic memory involved, I'd think it would be much easier to fully wipe an SSD, as a single blanking pass would seem to clear the whole thing.

However, it's really not a concern. Very few people (at least as a proportion of society) have the equipment and knowhow necissary to recover data from a formatted drive.

 

Think again.

Using tools that I can download in a minute or five, I can pull data off just about any flash device, phones, cards, and SSDs. So can you. It's trivially easy.

There are two reliable ways of cleanring flash media.

a) physical destruction.
b) using a DoD-spec media erasing software.

 

Yeah, but what percentage of the population even know there exists tools to do that?

Yes it won't hurt to overwrite the drive with random 0s and 1s but I wouldn't think it would be actually necessary to. People who intend to commit identity theft have much better and profitable things to do other than try to get the information off of hard drives.

 

You're kidding, right? There is a brisk business in the buying and selling of hard drives and other media from salvage and recycling centers. Those things are often priced by the pallet load. Grabbing peoples info from hard drives is the easiest thing fraudsters can do.

A couple of thousand $$$ worth of legitimately purchased used hard drives, a few not-too-expensive PCs running windows or linux, a couple of free downloads and a few adapter cables can bring in hundreds of thousands of $$ worth of fraud to a small operation.

ID theft isn't generally an opportunistic crime, the rantings of the newsies notwithstanding.

 

Any software that would do the job ?

 

Most of the manufacters websites feature tools that will low level format or zero fill the drive, their is also one made by HDDguru but i don't know if it supports SSDs.

 

format does not delete data. Even full format.

 

How about an unconditional format? eg format x: /u

 

DBAN (Darik's Boot and Nuke)

www.dban.org

 

Okie doke, I need to go the other way. One of my customers accidentally formats his HDD (I have no idea how) and need to recover the data.

BTW, I'm an electrician, not a computer specialist.

 

Dammit Jim, I'm an electrician, not a computer specialist!

(had to say it - for all you Trekkers out there).

 

above is why I don't sell my hardisks... I have personal infomation on them. If I want to dispose of them I COMPLETELY destroy the physical disk.

 

no software solution that doesn't bypass the drives wear leveling will ever allow fully guaranteed 100% deletion of the data. except killing the actual disk

 

disc + hammer = erase everything

 

ever try sending a drive to OnTrack or another data recovery company that has been DBAN'd with the DoD wipe? I did awhile back and they basically laughed and told me not to waste my time (long story)

 

Brother,

I am part of the peace movement...

 

Hello Laptopaddict,
Are you asking for recommendations of software that recovers data?
There are plenty, but you really have to know how it was deleted to sort which recovery sofware to use.

 

I don't know about him but I am.

Something about the guy used F10 to reboot after an error message and then when the comp loaded it was wiped clean.

 

Can you explain this ? (noob)

 

I was talking SSD. DBAN is designed for HDDs.

an ssd could detect a write of zeroes and just "mark as empty". data would still be there, then, no matter how often you zero it out.

i guess DBAN doesn't just zero out but write randoms, so it should kill all data anyways.

but for the wearleveling, ssds do have additional flash storage, and this might not have been overwritten, even while chance is very low when rewriting tons of times.